Infrastructure
London Bridge is falling down. Except it’s not in London. It’s here, in The USA. And it’s not just a bridge. It’s everything. Our infrastructure is the connective tissue that keeps our polite society out of the ditch. It’s our roads, our railways, our runways, our sewers, our water pipes, our electrical grids, our power plants. It’s the stuff we can’t always see, but rely on every single day. And it’s falling apart around us. Fixing the infrastructure is a job that will have no end, but if we don’t get started, it’ll be the end of us. Which means the right people with the right skill are going to be very, very busy.

Beaming Construction into the Future

From the outbox of Meyer’s inbox:

As I watched the stalwart Ravens get crushed thanks to an errant field goal kick, my mind drifted towards a future when robots would be playing football and such missed kicks could never occur. In this Jetsons fantasy, the teams would be controlled by skilled gamers. We’d also have rocket packs for personal transportation and a casino on the moon. While those might be a long way coming there is one area where a glimpse of the future is very much needed. That would be in the construction field which hasn’t had a major paradigm shift in generations. In other words, what modern marvels of the IT age can be brought onto a construction site? The following article ponders such a query.

HOW TO FIX AMERICA’S LEAST INNOVATIVE INDUSTRY: CONSTRUCTION

By Emily Badger writing for the Atlantic Cities

Buildings are essentially constructed the same way today that they were 50 years ago, whether they house single families, multi-story offices or commercial high-rises. Some architect comes up with an idea. He puts it down on paper. He hands off those paper diagrams to the building contractor. And that building contractor, once he agrees to a price, is then charged with converting someone else’s two-dimensional vision into a functioning home or office building – on budget, on time, and by code. Read More...

Nome Gets Fuel Pumped Across the Ice

From the outbox of Meyer’s inbox:

How’s your hot water running? Okay? Keeping warm? Good. Now imagine you’re surrounded by ice and have no way to get heating fuel. That’s exactly the situation faced by the citizens of Nome, Alaska as they deal with the ravages of one of the harshest winters they’ve had in some time. The only way Nome can get fuel is if it is barged in but being surrounded by the frozen tundra has put the brakes on that. Now a joint effort from the U.S. Coast Guard and a Russian oil tanker is getting the fuel to the folks of Nome before they run dry. Overall this is a trip of 5,000 miles including 700 yards of hoses stretched across the frozen Arctic sea. That’s old school infrastructure!

FUEL BEING TRANSFERRED TO ICED-IN ALASKA TOWN

From the AP – Anchorage, Alaska – A Russian tanker that went on an ocean odyssey of 5,000 miles to deliver fuel to the iced-in city of Nome was offloading the gasoline and diesel in what officials say is smooth sailing so far, with one possible problem avoided. Read More...

Abandoned America – Where Have All The People Gone?

When you think of ghost towns you think of the old west – but this slideshow from huffingtonpost.com offers a look at abandoned urban areas – some commercial, some residential but all are in a extreme state of decline. The photographs give you a sense of more than just time lost – it shows beauty in the derelict and the loss of history – only time will tell if any of these areas can be resurrected.

Photographs Of Abandoned America Show Civic Problems, Engagement

The following is a post from David Schalliol, the Visiting Assistant Professor of Social Sciences at the Illinois Institute of Technology. Read More...